When I am really sick. I try to avoid over reacting and going myself or taking my kids just because there's a cold going around the house or a simple flu that goes away in a day or two. Even though my insurance hides the cost to me I am aware of how expensive and in demand health care resources are these days!

Before anyone jumps on the statement about my kids; I do take them at least once a year for checkups and immunizations they may need that year.

Before I started bike racing (and the inevitable crashing... broken collar bone right now) I went about once a decade. 15 years without seeing a dentist. When I finally visited, no problems and still never had a cavity.

I can't believe that you immunize/vaccinate your children! Do you not know about the autism risk? Repeated studies have shown that a whopping 1.13% of vaccinated children will develop some form of autism!!! Any reasonable person can't deny the effect that vaccinations have had on our children. In contrast, only a low 1.13% of unvaccinated children will develop a form of autism. Fact*: vaccines cause autism.

* Because if you can't believe a disgraced doctor who falsified his case studies, who can you trust?

What about if you have a cold and want to rest up for the day rather than go into the office and infect everyone else? My workplace is pretty good but some places will demand that you go and waste a doctors time to write you a medical certificate to validate your sick leave.

You seem very proud of the fact that you do not get an annual flu shot or other vaccinations. You have already received at least one hostile comment because of this fact, and I must admit that my first impulse was to say something similarly vague, cryptic, and hostile. However, I realized that you might not be an asshole, but simply ignorant. On the off chance that you are actually concerned with people beyond yourself: vaccinations are important, even for people who feel that they never get sick.

Vaccination does two things: first, it keeps the individuals who have been vaccinated from getting sick; and second, it reduces the number of viable hosts, thus preventing diseases from spreading through society. Now, you might be willing to risk getting sick yourself, so the first may not matter to you, but the second should. Society benefits when people are not sickened and killed by preventable diseases. And make no mistake: influenza, pertussis, measles, chicken pox, and many of the other diseases for which we have vaccines can cause permanent damage or death.

There are people who cannot be vaccinated (the very young, people who are immunocompromised, and so on) and vaccines are not 100% effective, so some number of those that have been vaccinated are still vulnerable. The way to keep these people healthy is to ensure that the possible exposure to disease is limited as much as possible, which means relying on herd immunity. Herd immunity comes from vaccinating as many people as possible.

So please, if not for you, for the sake of the people around you, get vaccinated.

So please, if not for you, for the sake of the people around you, get vaccinated.

No!
If I get the flu shot, I will feel lousy for two or three days, and my arm will hurt for at least 2 days. That only means I won't get the flu IF they guessed correctly what strain would be going around this year.

If I don't get the shot, I have a CHANCE of getting the flu, but most years I don't get it, and if I do get it. What happens? I feel lousy for two or three days. (But my arm doesn't hurt.)

Let's assume you are correct. (You're not, but let's assume.)Then I get the flu about once every 12 to 15 years, so getting Flu shot that MIGHT prevent the flu is still not a worthwhile use of my time.

From 1976 to 2006, estimates of flu-related annual deaths ranged from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000, according to the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Taking the mid point as an estimate of the average, that's 26,000 US residents per year. Crudely extrapolating on a per-population basis this gives:

26,000 * (7118/314) = 589,000

The order of magnitude looks about right. I suspect taking a mid point would produce a high estimate of the mean, I also think that US mortalities would produce a low estimate of the global rate. Not everyone has access to that hospitalization that you were talking about.

When you feel lousy for "two or three days"? That's a cold. That's not the flu. You are not some ubermensch who can fight off the flu in a few days.

Wikipedia says "Approximately 33% of people with influenza are asymptomatic.", so it would seem that you're wrong from the outset - 1/3 of people will, on average, fight it off without every developing symptoms, even with a complete lack of superpowers.

I don't get flu shots. I've thought about it. And i'm 3 weeks into something I caught that is just lingering on, so maybe right now I wish I had, but there's no guarantee that it wasn't just some non-influenza virus that made my sinuses infected.

a) The flu vaccine is just over 50% effective, so it's basically a coin tossb) 'Herd immunity' can't really develop when the vaccine barely works and the virus mutates constantlyc) Getting vaccinated every year has been shown to reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine by about 20%.d) If you catch the flu, you're contagious without knowing it for about 2-3 days. If you get the vaccine, it protects all year.

So, you reduce the risk of having a 2-3 day window of making someone sick by 50%, in exchange for incre

You forgot to add one other 'what happens?': there is a good chance you will spread the flu to others, possibly some that have compromised or weaker immune systems.

Too bad. This is Earth. Life is dangerous, and no one gets out alive. Something will kill you -- car wreck, Kalahari lions, skydiving, gunfire, grenades, cancer, diabetes,... flu. There's worse ways to go. Hell, when I'm old, I'd rather die of flu than of Alzheimer's or emphysema. It'd be quicker.

Grow some perspective. We're organisms surviving in a world of organisms. Sometimes the microscopic ones win. But everyone dies regardless. It's always going to be a struggle, because viruses and bacteri

You seem very proud of the fact that you do not get an annual flu shot or other vaccinations.

You really shouldn't lump the annual flu shot with other vaccinations. Other vaccinations protect extremely well for a long time against very serious diseases with insignificant side effects. None of these describe the flu shot. The flu shot is a hastily concocted stew that, if it works at all, only works for one season against a disease that, in most forms, is not serious if you are otherwise healthy. Herd immunity doesn't work if you can't rely on those can be vaccinated to be immune. Unfortunately, even if absolutely everyone who could get the flu shot did, we still widespread flu in years where the primary strain was guessed incorrectly and limited cases even they guessed right because there is never just one strain.

My main point was about the benefits of vaccination in general, and not the benefits of specific vaccines. I only mentioned influenza in passing, as it is one of the diseases for which we have pretty good vaccines (most of the time), and it is a disease which can be quite dangerous (even in healthy people---there is some evidence to suggest that cytokine storms [wikipedia.org] caused by influenze may be more dangerous to those with healthy immune systems in the event of a pandemic flu). That said, most physicians (and th

While I agree with you, and not a lot of people seem to disagree here, that vaccinations against dangerous diseases are a good thing, I think over-medication is the bane of our health care systems.

In the Netherlands, doctors have a reputation for not easily medicating people. We're cautious about antibiotics, we're cautious about many types of drugs. The usual response of a Dutch doctor to fever is that as long as it's not over 40 degrees C and doesn't last for longer than three days, it's nothing to worry about. Of course this can be nuanced based on symptoms seen, but you get the gist of it.

This means that the amount of people that develop an immunity to antibiotics and whatnot is much lower than in countries such as Israel and Bulgaria, where people tend to be over-medicated in my view.

To get back to vaccination, I do think it's our collective responsibility to weed out things like polio, diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus as much as we can, not getting flu shots is hardly morally offensive for the reasons already stipulated by the poster above.

In the Netherlands there's a huge debate over religious freedom vis a vis the vaccination of children from families that are religious to the point where they don't vaccinate. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's a collective responsibility to make sure these children don't fall victim to their parents' backwards views.

What you believe should be your prerogative, but as soon as you let it endanger unsuspecting minors your belief should be a secondary concern relative to the safety of those unsuspecting minors.

Either which way, a degree of nuance is called for in any such debate, so I don't think you should make messaging as simple as a blanket statement of "please get vaccinated" any more than you should advise people not to get vaccinated at all.

The flu shot is a hastily concocted stew that, if it works at all, only works for one season against a disease that, in most forms, is not serious if you are otherwise healthy.

Interesting trivia: most bad flu strains kill via a cytokine storm [wikipedia.org]. Your body releases cytokines to trigger an immune response, and that immune response triggers the release of more cytokines. Some pathogens, like particular flus, remove the throttle that otherwise keeps that positive feedback loop from overwhelming and destroying your own body. Oh, and the cytokine response is strongest in young people with healthy immune systems.

In other words, in the event of a bad flu epidemic, that "otherwise healthy"

By comparison, the most hysterical count of vaccine deaths given by anti-vaxxers was about 1,000 out of about 130 million vaccines given [cdc.gov]. This means that even for people who suck at math and logic, it's far safer to get the vaccine than not to.

I'm sorry, do we have a reading comprehension problem here? I did not say "flu/pneumonia", I said flu. Pneumonia is a different disease. And I did not say "total deaths", I specified deaths of young and healthy people. Your second statistic is completely meaningless and out of context. It is you, sir, who fail at math and logic.

So I'll repeat my question. How many *young and healthy* people died from *the flu* last year?

It's difficult to count, because it's not standard practice to find virus that killed someone of "flu/pneumonia".
But "in a given season the influenza virus may account for around 10-15% of flu like illness in the community, although during epidemics influenza can account for 60% of flu like illnesses." Mark Crislip [sciencebasedmedicine.org]

So I'll repeat my question. How many *young and healthy* people died from *the flu* last year?

I don't know. How many do you think?

I do know that young and healthy people that don't get vaccinated are safer from zombie apocalypses than from influenza. Zombies eat brains.

a) The flu vaccine is only 56% effective, so it only reduces the risk of dying by halfb) 90% of flu deaths are infants or elderly -- the total number in the 19-65 age range who die every year is closer to 5,000, so if you're in that group you're pretty safe.

Granted, you're still less likely to die of the vaccine than the virus...but that's not the point. I'm more likely to die because I smoke and eat cheeseburgers and drink alcohol, but I (and plenty of others) still do these. When you're doing a risk vs. r

against a disease that, in most forms, is not serious if you are otherwise healthy.

Half a million kills per year.

It's more serious than breast cancer, in terms of deaths.

Herd immunity doesn't work if you can't rely on those can be vaccinated to be immune.

This is not true. The number of people required to be vaccinated before herd immunity kicks in is a function of the virulence and infectiousness of the disease, as well as the effectiveness of the vaccine, but you don't need the vaccine effectiveness to be 100% for Herd Immunity to kick in.

You seem very proud of the fact that you do not get an annual flu shot or other vaccinations.

Setting aside the debate about the value of vaccinations (although I don't think there is much valid debate personally), you don't need to go to the doctor to get your annual flu shot or most vaccinations. I get my annual flu shot at a local pharmacy (Rite Aid, Wall-greens, Costco, etc.). I don't count that has a "doctor visit". Even on my inexpensive "high deductible" health plan, such vaccinations are free with no copay or deductible. Even without insurance, a flu shot at a local pharmacy is pretty inexpe

Society benefits when people are not sickened and killed by preventable diseases.

Quite probably, in the short term, although I don't think any studies have been made.

In the long term, I'm not so sure - with most diseases, the weakest will die off more than the strongest, which improves the overall healthiness of the species.Just like predators culling a herd of prey leads to healthier prey, there may be a balance here.

Personally, I have nothing against decimating the population every few years, if it leads to stronger humans in the long run.

That's true, mostly because the anti-vaccine movement keeps flogging that old dead horse that thiomersal (or thimerosal in the US), the anti-fungal agent containing mercury II used in some formulations of the flu vaccine, is toxic or causes autism. It's not actually a reason to not get vaccinated, because vaccination doesn't cause autism and getting a microscopic dose of a mercury-based compound once a year is not going to do you any meaningful harm. On the other hand, people who refuse to get vaccinated and pass on the flu to their elderly neighbours kill thousands of people every year.

From the CDC:

Is thimerosal in vaccines safe?

Yes. There is a large body of scientific evidence on the safety of thimerosal. Data from several studies show the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines do not cause harm, and are only associated with minor local injection site reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site.

Three U.S. health agencies (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)) have reviewed the published research on thimerosal and found it to be a safe product to use in vaccines. Three independent organizations [The National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)] reviewed the published research and also found thimerosal to be a safe product to use in vaccines. The medical community supports the use of thimerosal in influenza vaccines to protect against potential bacterial contamination of multi-dose vials.

[Citation needed]. Preferably one not involving made up data that's since been retracted by the journal it originally appeared in.

It's actually a moot point. Even if there were a proven link between vaccines and autism the risk of getting measles, chicken pox, influenza, or other nasty and potentially fatal diseases is far greater than the risk of getting autism. Any parent who doesn't vaccinate for fear of autism is showing *horrible* risk assessment skills.

[Citation needed]. Preferably one not involving made up data that's since been retracted by the journal it originally appeared in.

It's actually a moot point. Even if there were a proven link between vaccines and autism the risk of getting measles, chicken pox, influenza, or other nasty and potentially fatal diseases is far greater than the risk of getting autism. Any parent who doesn't vaccinate for fear of autism is showing *horrible* risk assessment skills.

My kids will receive all their vaccinations. That being said-

We were absolutely terrified about our children being autistic. An autistic child is not something I would wish on anyone. All the extra care which has been shown to help is generally not covered by insurance. This can basically ruin the family finances, destroy any hope of following a sensible retirement plan, suck up every waking moment of your life, and you still have the fact that the kid will never really be "normal" and may never be tr

It's entirely true that there is no statistical evidence of a correlation.

It isn't the mercury, it is the potential for overloading the immune system.

This has been refuted by the science. Also, in a modern western environment the Immune system is bored out of its tree. There's a very plausible hypothesis that too much hygiene is causing it to overreact and cause allergies.

I'm not sure if you are serious or not, but on the off chance that you are: there are better ways of managing population, such as condoms, birth control pills, and adequate sexual education. Killing off the elderly doesn't help that much (they have already had their children), and wishing for the death of anyone is rather anti-humanist.

If your mother is a nurse, she must not live in the U.S., or work in a hospital. My wife's a doctor, has practiced in half a dozen states, and has *never* encountered a hospital in which flu shots are optional. And as a radiologist, she doesn't even have contact with patients! Refuse to get the shot, lose your job.

She works in a small hospital in western Pennsylvania. The rule there is that you either get a flu vaccine or wear a face mask all flu season. She opts for the face mask. Which I'd personally much prefer as a patient considering that the flu vaccine is only about 50% effective -- the masks are going to protect the patients FAR better than getting the vaccine would.

The flu doesn't seep out of your pores. As long as you wash your hands after touching any orifices (which nurses sure as hell better be doing anyway) a face mask will be more than sufficient.

And I bet the masks nurses use are gonna beat the 95% effectiveness of the dirt cheap dust mask I bought at Lowes...compared to the 56% effective rate of the influenza vaccine. So yeah, I'm still thinking I'd prefer the face mask.

My mother is a nurse. She never gets a flu shot and advises me to do the same.

FFS, send her to an ID specialist to get a proper opinion, or at least forward her this one. [medscape.com]

I've included the relevant responses to the objections that you make:

Flu shots have a pretty good chance of just giving you the flu.

1) The flu shot gives me the flu. Dumb Ass. The shot is a killed vaccine. It cannot give you influenza. It is impossible to get flu from the influenza vaccine, either from the shot or the live attenuated vaccine..

They have a pretty good chance of not working at all (because there's many strains of the flu).

10) I received the vaccine and I got the flu anyway. Inexact Dumb Ass. The vaccine is not perfect and you may have indeed had the flu

Most of the people I know who used to get flu shots later caught the flu.

10) I received the vaccine and I got the flu anyway [medscape.com]. Inexact Dumb Ass. The vaccine is not perfect and you may have indeed had the flu. More likely you called one of the many respiratory viruses (viri?) people get each year that they call ‘the flu’. Remember there are dozens of potential causes of a respiratory infection circulating, the vaccine only covers influenza, the virus most likely to kill you and yours.

Many of the people I know who had flu shots immediate felt so sick they would rather have had the flu.

When I get sick I tend to let my body fight it off, granted I will eat super healthy to help my immune system.

Your immune system is finely tuned between fighting off infections and autoimmune diseases. Eating super healthy is a good idea, but it doesn't have a particular effect on the action of the immune system, compared to other systems of the body. And this is just as well, because you don't generally want to perturb it unless you're immunodeficient or highly allergic / suffer from an autoimmune disorder.

I'm the same here with 10+ years of no doctor visits. I rarely even get sick though so there's no worry about spreading; maybe happens every 18mo or so where I just get floored. Though there are times I do go in to work... because it's warm there and the medicine cabinet is free. I'm closed in with my own office though so there's that.

So for all you know, your blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol are enormous and you're ready to pop.

Yearly trip to the dentist - or so. Yearly trip to the eye doctor - or so. Even without being sick, 1 or 2 would seem reasonable. And of course, there's always the vet.

Similar annual trips, only, Dentist (x2 cleanings per year), oncologist, gp, dermatologist, ophthalmologist, annual PET scan and soon the proctologist/urologist will end up on the list. Getting old sucks! But, I do know a lot of doctors.:) If something does happen I now have a network where I am probably only two phone calls away from a recognized specialist in whatever might be needed. I don't mess around with that hero "I don't need to see a doctor unless I am really sick" thing anymore. Not since Hodgki

Unfortunately, until someone mentioned it, I wasn't even thinking of dental and eye doctor visits, so that's: twice a year to my GP, once to my OB/GYN, twice to the dentist and once to the eye doctor, minus occasions that something is actually wrong, which isn't often.

So that means I have a basic schedule - wife and I each get 2 dental cleanings a year, 1 wellness exam, etc. These are all "preventative" care so they cost me nothing (excluding the cost of my insurance). Then there's my psychiatrist, 2-3 times a year. Then I usually get "sick enough" to go get some antibiotics once or twice a year. Beyond that it's different every year-- wisdom teeth, flu, ER visit for a head injury, X-ray for a hand injury, wife had gallstones and had her gallbladder removed, things like that. Since I have good health insurance, I never look for reasons to avoid going to the doctor. If there's something wrong, even if it's minor, I go to the doctor and get it taken care of. 10+ doctor visits a year, easily.

My sister-in-law, on the other hand, has various annoying health problems that she's had for years and never has the time or money to address. Cavities, broken teeth, infected cysts, back pain. She works for an hourly wage and has no health insurance. Many doctors won't even take her on as a new patient, presumably because she couldn't afford them. She goes to the ER when she has something scary going on, like chest pain, but otherwise doesn't ever go to the doctor or the dentist.

Whatever this country decides to do about healthcare, I understand that any change will only make my insurance coverage get worse/more expensive, but that's because I already have the best. I also know that there are a lot of people like my sister-in-law out there, who really need some fucking help. I hope Obamacare pans out, I really do.

We have a yearly legally mandated check-up. I also have moderately high blood pressure and need to refill my diuretic prescription every three months. That alone makes for five visits a year. And if there's something else, that simply adds to it. So 5-8 visits in a year would be completely unsurprising.

If you add dental appointments and accompanying a family member I easily show up at a medical office more than once a month on average.

When I was a kid, I always got so bored listening to people whining about their medical issues. But all these years later, being a cancer survivor, having a variety of ongoing injuries from sports, and general health issues, I spend a lot of time in doctors' offices. I'm just really lucky that I'm in that rare elite class in the United States that merits good health insurance. If not for that, I would have died years ago - who can afford a half million or more out of pocket for cancer treatment?

What's that joke about the British {or any other developed nation in the world} doing a remake of Breaking Bad? Walt gets diagnosed with cancer in Episode 1 then the rest of the show is about him receiving free high quality cancer care?

But, as I said to those making the joke when it went around last year, apparently untrue. It seems from (admittedly, purely casual) searching that cancer outcomes are actually somewhat better in the US than in Europe, at least for some kinds of cancer. The National Center for Policy Analysis, a "non-partisan think tank," has a page from 2007 on this [ncpa.org] with cites to appropriate studies; and a 2011 British Department of Health policy document entitled "Improving Outcomes: A Strategy for Cancer [dh.gov.uk]

I don't think the joke is really about the quality of care (I agree with you that US care for advanced and complicated conditions is better than most parts of the world (just don't look up where the US rates for infant mortality)). It's about being able to pay for it. In the show, Walt is receiving good care - it's not that he can't access care, it's that the cost of that care would be economically devastating for him and his family without some form of 'outside support'.

A quarter of medicare payments happen in the last year of life (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2838161/). Those "ghetto-rat-wanna-be-gangstas and trailer-trash-nascar-fans" are still racking up some pretty spectacular healthcare bills as they die of cogestive heart failure and lung cancer. If they have health insurance (from changing tyres at nascar races or whatever) then the cost is carried by all of us through increased premiums. If they make it to age 66 then it's carried by all of us through taxes. If they get their healthcare through the emergency room then you better believe we all carry the cost because that's about the most expensive form of healthcare on the planet, and we all pay for it through either taxes or insurance premiums or a mix of both depending on whether the hospital is public or private. As many many other coutries have discovered, it's a lot fucking cheaper to just have universal healthcare and remove the profit-making middlemen from the equation.

I'm Canadian, while the medical system here is not perfect, not having "decent" health insurance is not a life or death or bankruptcy situation. The whole anti-Oamacare movement is baffling to most of us up here.

Looking at these responses, 67% are currently indicating they visit the doctor less than once a year or roughly once a year. That's how medical insurance companies make their money, on the vast majority of us who don't need the medical attention.

When you're younger, maybe not once a year, but don't assume you don't need to. It's good to have things like potential problems discovered proactively. I did bloodwork years back and found out I was approaching the prediabetes range which gave me plenty of time to address it without it becoming a chronic condition.

I was raised by a nurse...which means if I'm well enough to make myself a cup of tea every couple hours, I'm not going to the doctor. Unless I know I need something, like when I get an infection and have to schedule a visit to get antibiotics.

Doesn't help that usually when I *do* go see a doctor they just made things worse. Last time I went to actually see a doctor was when Swine Flu was the big thing and I had all the symptoms (I've gotten lab tests since then, with the analysis and prescriptions done over

My employer's insurance company madates an annual checkup to get "prefered" rates. (Out of pocket doubles if you don't jump through a few hoops.)

Every time I've gone, nothing good has come of it. I'm currently fighting a +$600 bill for a CAT scan I never wanted, to diagnose some marginal test results. Turns out I have a gall stone. Most people do. And the recommended treatment is.... wait for it.... nothing. Ignore it until it causes problems.

My doctor is milking the system every chance he gets, running every test he can marginally justify.

I use to never go to the doctor unless it seemed life-threatening. Then I got married and have a daughter. Now my wife nags me to got all my shots, vaccines and sends me to the doctor over insignificant ailments.

I visit my doctor quite often (once a month or so), because he likes to check i'm not going manic or suicidal. What a weirdo. Anyway i'm lucky in that i'm in the UK and it's free at the point of use. If I had to shell out cash every time I saw him, I would probably just sit and stew at home and be more likely to do something stupid.

I only go to medical doctors (as opposed to dentists and eye doctors) when absolutely necessary. Same with going to hospitals. Way too many people around either who are sick or dying. I'd rather hang with the other healthy people.

What? No. Doctors can legally write for up to a year without a consult in the states with which I'm familiar, and usually do. I've never heard of anyone needing to go every three months unless they are on something that specifically needs to be monitored regularly (like psych meds). I'm on two maintenance meds with my PCP and I see him once a year. Hell, with mail order prescriptions one fill is a 90 days supply and they usually write for three refills. If it's been less than a year and you run out for some

going to the doctor once a year is good for you, and good for keeping healthcare costs down. Preventative treatment of things is key to keeping costs of expensive surgeries and treatments at later stages of disease and injuries. I'm guessing you are probably healthy but man you should get checked out. I got checked out and found out I had high blood pressure and cholesterol which apparently after talking to my dad every male person in my family has. Thing is, you never know unless you get checked out.